Kentucky is undoubtedly one of the blue-blood schools of college basketball. It has the second-most wins in Division-I basketball history and the highest win percentage (sorry to the Whittier Poets, we’re counting current D1 teams only). Kentucky is also ranked second in the KenPom.com program ratings, which go back to 1997.

John Calipari had lost his stranglehold over the SEC, which he held until the pandemic-impacted 2020-21 season. In the early years, Cal and the Wildcats were a near lock to win the league, and they were good for a deep NCAA Tournament run. But post-COVID, the Cats were a different program. They were still good, but with the lack of success in the tournament and the shifting grounds underneath the coaches’ feet, Kentucky fans were getting impatient.

Regardless of how you feel about Calipari, he was successful. UK fans wanted him to get older, so he did. They wanted more offense, and they got one of the best 3-point shooting teams in the country. But he couldn’t overcome the early exits in the tournament.

So now Cal is in Fayetteville, and the ’Cats turned to Mark Pope. That they did so after being turned down by Scott Drew, Dan Hurley, and possibly others is just a reminder of how much college athletics has changed. A decade ago, every coach outside of the head coaches at Duke, North Carolina, and Kansas would have lept for the chance to coach hoops in Lexington. Now? Kentucky turns to an alum without a single NCAA Tournament win on his resume.

Previous SEC Previews:

• 7. Missouri Tigers, 9-9
• 8. Ole Miss Rebels, 9-9
• 9. Texas A&M Aggies, 9-9
• 10. Texas Longhorns, 8-10
• 11. Mississippi State Bulldogs, 7-11
• 12. Vanderbilt Commodores, 7-11
• 13. Oklahoma Sooners, 7-11
• 14. Georgia Bulldogs, 6-12
• 15. LSU Tigers, 5-13
• 16. South Carolina Gamecocks, 5-13

Kentucky Wildcats

Last season: 23 – 10 (13-5 in conference) #23

The Masses Prediction: 5th in conference, 11.1 – 6.9

SEC Media Pick: 8th in conference

Analytics Average: 7th in conference, 30th overall

Dylan Widger-Imagn Images

HEAD COACH: Mark Pope | 1st Season, 0-0

If the opening paragraphs were enough to make you think Pope is out of his depth, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Pope is an outstanding basketball coach. No matter how many times it’s said, winning an NCAA Tournament game is not an indicator of being a good basketball coach. The tournament is random, which is what makes it fun.

Pope has been a head coach for nine years. His first stop was rebuilding a WAC school at Utah Valley, where he won the league in his fourth and final season. He then took the BYU job and had immediate success. He likely would have made the tournament in back-to-back years had COVID not canceled the first one.

But the mark of a good coach is outperforming expectations. In three out of his five seasons at BYU, Pope’s teams finished over 20 spots higher in the KenPom.com ratings than initially projected. Included in that was an entry into the toughest conference in basketball, the Big 12, which most might consider soft considering BYU walked into Allen Fieldhouse and won like it’s just something teams often do.

But the difference between Lexington’s white-hot heat and Provo’s white heat is different. For Pope’s sake, at least he’s seen this reel before, having played for the ‘Cats under Rick Pitino. He understands the job as well as anyone can before stepping onto the sideline.

The weird pandemic year aside, the last 10 years have been consistently good for Kentucky, even if they weren’t consistently great. I’ve long argued that perceptions about Calipari’s performance didn’t always factor in the SEC’s consistent investment and improvement in men’s hoops, which resulted from cash being pumped in by the conference’s network. It’s common for more than half the league’s teams to earn an NCAA tournament bid. It also meant UK didn’t have a cakewalk to SEC titles. It wasn’t so much Calipari slipping, as Cal maintaining a level at UK, and everyone catching up.

Mark Pope and John Calipari are very different style coaches from one another. In many ways, Cal was perfect for the UK brand in the time and space he occupied. The one-and-done era fit Cal and his roster construction. But that era is essentially done, and it remains to be seen if he can carry that over to Arkansas. But Pope’s mission isn’t to sign the best recruiting classes (although he’s already off to a good start there) but to win as much as possible. We’ll see if he can return the program to those pre-COVID levels of success.

LOST PRODUCTION

Minutes: 99.91% | 16th
Points: 100% | 16th
Possessions: 100% | 16th

Yep. Everyone is gone. Technically, the Wildcats bring back a few minutes from walk-ons. But if you remember anyone from the Kentucky roster last season, they’re gone. Calipari had Reed Sheppard, Rob Dillingham and Justin Edwards drafted into the NBA, Antonio Reeves and Tre Mitchell aged out, and everyone else entered the transfer portal.

7 total players entered the transfer portal, and three followed Calipari to Arkansas.

So, this is a hard reset. But a hard reset in the transfer portal era still carries a ray of hope, and this is Kentucky we’re talking about.

Brett Davis-Imagn Images

Pope set out to assemble a basketball team armed with a load of NIL cash. We’ve seen this sort of thing play out before, but it’s never been done at a program like Kentucky. This won’t be the last time a coach has to sign a full roster of players. Still, he at least had the most essential part at his disposal: the hefty pocketbooks of Kentucky donors.

But given nearly unlimited funds but limited to players in the transfer portal, what kind of team did Mark Pope want to build? Did he want to mirror his most recent team at BYU, where he played a five-out system with lots of movement on the inside around a great passing big man in Aly Khalifa or pivot to something more traditional?

The initial plan seems to be to build the offense around the skilled Wake Forest big man Andrew Carr, a player accustomed to back-to-the-basket touches and playing out of the short roll on a pick-and-roll. Carr was a limited-usage player at Wake Forest but has all the makings of a player you can play through. Plus, he shot 37% from behind the arc.

Pope’s priority was surrounding Carr with shooting, and he was able to do that. Otega Oweh, a wing transfer from Oklahoma, shot 37.7%. Jaxson Robinson, who’s been with Pope for two years at BYU, shot 35.4%. Koby Brea was one of the hottest shooters on the market last year at 49.8% while at Dayton, and Kerr Kriisa shot 42.4% from deep at West Virginia last season.

While shooting isn’t his best quality, and he’s not a true point guard, Lamont Butler is a steady leader with Final Four experience after being an integral part of the San Diego State program for the last four years.

Then, to help with rebounding and defensive rim protection, they went hard after Drexel big man Amari Williams and former McDonald’s All-American Brandon Garrison. Overall, it was a pretty good haul out of the portal.

William Purnell-Imagn Images

One of the known issues with building solely through the portal is the difficulty of building reliable depth. What Pope has accomplished here is pretty close. His lineups at BYU were different from the way Calipari’s run things at Kentucky. Cal tended to have a short bench and a strong top two or three. Pope has used a much longer bench, and he’s spread the ball around.

It would make sense the way this roster was constructed without a true possession eater. There was a heavy emphasis on skill, shooting, and experience, so this looks more like a BYU roster.

The depth of quality in this roster is promising. Provided everyone stays healthy, there is the potential for a full rotation of nine or ten players.

Four Quad-1 games in non-conference is about as good as it gets, but also par for the course for Kentucky. Even Calipari liked to load up on easy-ish home games to go with the locked-in dates like the Champions Classic (this year, the ‘Cats get Duke) and any MTE they might be in. But at least instead of more Q4 games, Pope scheduled a couple Q3 teams to mix it up.

The SEC did not give them any breaks with Tennessee and Alabama, which are projected to be two of the top three teams in the league for home-and-home play.

THE RULING

A season ago, Kentucky was the least experienced team in the SEC for about the 15th year in a row. Only Texas A&M, Ole Miss, and Auburn have more experience this season. That’s a significant shift in approach. I’m not sure you could find two more diametrically opposed styles than going from John Calipari to Mark Pope.

Cal is big time, big news, and big talk. He’s one of the few faces who looks at home on the Vince McMahon swagger walk gif. Pope is the opposite. He’s a little awkward, a Mormon kid who picked Kentucky after deciding to transfer away from Washington, his home state school. He spent his time out of the spotlight and only came back to Kentucky when the Wildcats struck out on all of their other top choices. Cal was UKs first choice in 2009, Pope was the Cats fallback choice this time.

Cal was who they coveted. Pope is who they have.

This Kentucky team looks a lot like how his rosters were built at BYU — only supercharged. While Pope had success at BYU, he wasn’t awesome there. This isn’t a no-brainer. And if you’re a Kentucky fan, there’s enough reason to fret. This could be a step back. After all, for all of Cal’s faults, he only went below .500 in conference play once. And that was their disaster post-COVID season when they went 8-9.

This version of the Cats may accomplish a sub-.500 record in season one. There’s good talent on the roster, but there’s nobody you’ll point to as the sure-fire guy to elevate them. There doesn’t seem to be an NBA-level player on the roster at all in another massive departure from the Calipari era.

With as big of a grouping as there is in the middle of the SEC, it might help them if they had that type of guy. But this squad should be able to shoot the rock. If they defend well enough and shoot it well, they should be pretty good at the very worst.

My Results: Kentucky Wildcats — 6th in conference, 10-8

About the preview: a number of respected basketball bloggers were asked to submit one pick for the entire league schedule game by game. The game by game option allows us to account for the unbalanced schedule when addressing any kind of power rankings. Each set of picks are reflected in “the Masses” picks. Included in “the Masses” are various SEC media members who made picks at my request, as well as additional credit given to the analytics projections.

If you’d like to submit your picks, click here for the Google Form we used. If you want to know your results, send me an email.

Additionally, instead of relying solely on KenPom.com for the analytics site projections, we’re taking the average of the four main sites (EvanMiya.com, BartTorvik.com, Haslametrics.com, and KenPom.com) to give a closer consensus picture. These are weighted a touch for reliability.

The projections: This is new! In an attempt to be as accurate as we could be we increased the amount of analytics used to make individual projections which influenced how these teams slotted in order. Matt Watkins used an indepth method for projecting the entire SEC transfer list, we then mixed in EvanMiya.com’s BPR projections, and BartTorvik.com’s preseason individual projections to round out the expected production based upon how each coach routinely uses his rotations.

GLOSSARY

* – an asterisk denotes a walk-on player

GP – Games Played

%min – percentage of total available minutes played, does not account for time missed due to injury

%poss – percentage of team possessions the player is responsible for ending a possession, whether by making a shot, missing a shot not rebounded by the offense or committing a turnover. For returning players this is noted as a percentage of total team possessions. For newcomers it was total possessions when that player was on the floor, better known as Usage Rate.

BPR – Bayseian Performance Rating, a single player efficiency metric created by Evan Miyakawa to determine both offensive and defensive impact when a player is on the floor.

PPG – Points Per Game, RPG – Rebounds Per Game, APG – Assists Per Game: All traditional statistics used to measure player production.

For newcomer player rankings, we used EvanMiya.com’ s rankings for transfers, and 247sports.com ‘s Composite Rating for Freshmen and Junior College signees.